Everything was suffocatingly white.
The room was small, smelling of antiseptic and sickness. The walls were whitewashed, as was the floor, but the small uncomfortable chairs in it were the color of vomit.
There were small bloodspots on the walls and floor, which made the whiteness even more unsettling.
Dash Sprinter had always hated hospitals, but nowhere near as much as he did then. His chest tightened at every scream, whether they were from the person he was waiting to see or someone incredibly different.
His best friend, practically his brother, Jarek Alexander, was even tenser, if possible.
Jarek's sister, Dash's girlfriend, she was the one they were enduring this place for. She was sick, the damn robots told Jarek and Dash.
They knew very well she was sick. When she finally agreed to go to the hospital she couldn't even stand up by herself.
The robots told Jarek and Dash that she was internally bleeding out, that they might not be able to stop it. They didn't say why she was internally bleeding out, just that she was.
They were going to try to stabilize her so Dash and Jarek could see her.
The robots said they should keep it short and sweet, it might be the last time they ever see her, that's what they said.
When he heard that, Jarek stood up and punched them all out before clenching his fists, letting out a ragged breath, and sitting back down.
It was another twenty minutes of silence, of both Jarek and Dash wanting to comfort each other and not knowing how before they were allowed to see her.
They were led down a whitewashed and bloodstained hall by a mildly attractive female android.
She opened the door for them, and left.
The room was full of beeping machines, and it made Dash want to crawl out of his skin. And then Dash saw Joss, and she was one of the most depressing things he'd ever seen. She was barely conscious, obviously on some kind of heavy painkiller. The vibrancy of her purple hair was fading, as were her once-beautiful green eyes. She had something in her nose, and the sheets of her bed were stained with blood that the nanos quickly erased.
This confused Dash. If the nanos in the sheets could erase the blood, why couldn't the nanos in the walls and floors do the same thing? But that wasn't important.
Jarek was kneeling next to her, using his wounded animal voice.
"Hi, Joss," he said.
She smiled at him, and he tried to smile back, but it was shaking and tears were running down his face.
"I'll be fine," she told him.
Jarek valiantly attempted to speak, but the tears were overtaking him and he turned away.
Dash took his place at Joss's side.
He kissed her lightly on the lips, brushing a bit of hair out of her face.
"I love you," he told her, very matter-of-factly.
"I love you too," she said, but her voice was fading, her eyes were dulling.
Jarek resumed his place next to her as all life faded from her.
When she was gone, he tried to breathe deeply and not do something stupid, but this was Jarek.
So he screamed until he couldn't scream anymore, sobbing and knocking everything over, throwing heart monitors through windows and punching every robot that came in.
Dash just watched.
He wasn't crying.
He just felt numb, as always.
And as Jarek started calming down and surveying the damage, he turned to Dash.
"She deserved better," Jarek said.
And she did.
She deserved to go out with a bang, not die in a hospital without fighting first. That just wasn't Joss's style.
Then really big androids started coming in, androids with guns and tranquilizers.
Jarek looked over at Dash, panic in his eyes.
They both knew what they had to do.
It was only the second floor, they would probably survive.
So Dash steeled himself, ran for the broken window, and hurled himself into the life of a fugitive.
He really had nothing better to do with his life.
A/N: Please review!